Index Librorum Prohibitorum
ADDPMP719
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum condemned religious and secular texts alike, grading works by the degree to which they were seen to be repugnant to the church. The aim of the list was to protect church members from reading theologically, culturally or politically disruptive books. Such books included works by astronomers, such as the German Johannes Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (published in three volumes from 1618 to 1621), which was on the Index from 1621 to 1835 and works by philosophers, such as the Prussian Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and editions and translations of the Bible that had not been approved. Editions of the Index also contained the rules of the Church relating to the reading, selling and preemptive censorship of books. In many cases, an author’s opera omnia (complete works) were forbidden.
Noteworthy other figures on the Index include Simone de Beauvoir, Nicolas Malebranche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Nikos Kazantzakis, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Desiderius Erasmus, David Hume, René Descartes, Fran- cis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal and Hugo Grotius. Contrary to a popular misconception, Charles Darwin’s works were never included.













































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































